(NEW YORK) — Trevor Reed, the 30-year-old former Marine who has been detained on what his family says are trumped up charges in Russia for over two years, has gone on hunger strike, his family confirmed Monday.
It marks a dramatic escalation in Reed’s battle to secure his freedom, with his family expressing growing frustration with the Biden administration for not doing enough, they said.
“While we are immensely proud of our son’s strength of character, we are also extremely worried about his health,” his parents Joey and Paula and sister Taylor said in a statement Monday.
Reed’s Russian girlfriend told ABC News that he started his hunger strike last Thursday, Nov. 4. His family confirmed the news through his Russian attorney, saying in a statement Monday that he is protesting “his arbitrary detention and Russian authorities’ numerous and flagrant violations of his basic human rights and his rights under Russian law.”
Reed has been in solitary confinement for nearly three months now, and he has not been able to contact his family in nearly four months. The former Marine presidential guard has been in Russian custody since August 2019, sentenced to nine years last July for assaulting two police officers. The U.S. embassy in Moscow has called the trial absurd, as the two officers struggled to recall the alleged incident in court hearings and contradicted themselves repeatedly.
In a labor camp in the remote Mordovia region for months now, Reed has been confined to a small cell that doesn’t include a toilet, and items that U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan brought for him when he visited in September have not been given to him by prison guards, according to his family.
“Our concern is magnified by Russian authorities’ decision to hold Trevor incommunicado which makes it impossible for us or the Embassy to monitor his health,” they said.
After President Joe Biden met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June, there was hope for and speculation about a prisoner swap, especially because Biden said he raised his case and that of Paul Whelan, another U.S. citizen detained by Russia.
But there was no deal reached in the weeks and months that followed, and a family representative told ABC News that they are not aware of any talks ongoing right now to free Reed.
In their statement, the Reed family urged the Biden administration to exchange one of the two Russians whose names have been floated publicly by Russian state media and senior Russian officials as a possible exchange. Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death” because of his notorious work as a prolific arms dealer, is serving a 25-year sentence in U.S. federal prison, while Konstantin Yaroshenko is serving a 20-year sentence for attempting to smuggle cocaine and other illicit drugs to the U.S. as a pilot.
While Reed’s family members note they have been “patient,” it’s clear they are getting increasingly frustrated and anguished. They said Monday they hope Biden and his national security adviser Jake Sullivan “will find the time to see us” when they next visit Washington and “find the political will to bring our son home.”
But while they said they “look forward to our son receiving” the administration’s attention for his hunger strike, the State Department was succinct on the subject. Spokesperson Ned Price said Monday that the agency is aware of reports of Reed’s hunger strike, but declined to comment further, citing privacy concerns.
Ambassador Sullivan last visited Reed in prison camp on Sept. 22 and will try to visit him again this month, Price added, as well as Whelan.
Britney Spears told fans in a new update that she’s praying hard that, by week’s end, she will be released from her controversial 13-year conservatorship.
“This week is gonna be very interesting for me,” Britney posted to Instagram Monday. “I haven’t prayed for something more in my life.”
The singer’s next court hearing is set for November 12, where Judge Brenda J. Penny will consider terminating the conservatorship.
Britney also admitted to feeling overwhelmed by her ongoing legal battle, saying that complicated emotions may have gotten the best of her on several occasions.
“I know I’ve said some things on my Insta out of anger and I’m sorry but I’m only human … and I believe you’d feel the same way if you were me,” she wrote.
While she didn’t directly reference some of her past controversial statements, she did make headlines last week when, in a since-deleted Instagram post, she accused her mom Lynne Spears of masterminding the conservatorship and, in the process, “secretly ruining my life.”
Britney also admitted in her post, “I can’t say I’m never going to complain again… cuz who knows,” then added she’s focusing on the “new day” ahead.
Last month, Ed Sheeran revealed that he and Elton John were teaming up for a Christmas single, and during an appearance on The Tonight Show on Monday, Sheeran shared some more details about the song.
The “Shivers” singer told host Jimmy Fallon that Elton called him up last December to wish him a Merry Christmas and extended an invitation to join him on another holiday song, because his classic “Step Into Christmas” had returned to the British top 10.
“So, he rung me on Christmas day and said, ‘I want to do another Christmas song do you want to do with it me?'” Sheeran recalls. “So I said to Elton, I was like, “I don’t really want to do Christmas song unless we’re going in unless it’s like…sleigh bells, ding dong — it needs to be a proper Christmas song. So I wrote a chorus, and then I went to go and stay with him and we wrote three and one of them was this one called ‘Merry Christmas.'”
“I’m like, “We’re gonna have to change that title ’cause there’s probably loads of songs called ‘Merry Christmas,'” he continued.
However, to Ed’s surprise, “I went on Spotify and I typed in ‘Merry Christmas.’ Nothing. There’s ‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ there’s ‘Happy Xmas.’ There’s ‘Merry Xmas (War Is Over)’… There’s not a song called ‘Merry Christmas.’ And then I went on YouTube and checked it out; it baffled me…it’s kind of like this glitch in a video game where no one saw.”
A release date for “Merry Christmas” has yet to be announced.
(NEW YORK) — Vaccine mandates have been yet another controversial move in the deeply divisive COVID-19 pandemic, sparking lawsuits, protests and warnings of reductions in service.
But data and experts suggest that they are working.
In fact, some organizations saw their employee vaccination rates jump from less than half to over 90%.
James Colgrove, a professor of public health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told ABC News that he’s not surprised with this outcome and predicted that similar workplace orders will follow the same story.
“In general, vaccine mandates work,” he said.
While vaccine opponents may appear vocal, medical experts say most are not dead set against the vaccination and need that push brought up by a mandate.
Although Colgrove and other medical experts say the country is in “uncharted territory” when it comes to vaccine mandates for adults, since such orders are rare outside of the health care industry, the signs are pointing to the directives greatly moving the needle in the country’s vaccinations efforts.
Jumps in vaccinations after mandates issued
Colgrove said the country has seen the effectiveness of vaccine mandates in our schools, which for decades have mandated inoculations against measles, mumps and other ailments. Mandates for hospital workers have also been shown to prevent outbreaks and mass worker shortages from illness, he noted.
COVID-19’s persistence in the U.S. and the resulting worker shortages from sick and hospitalized employees virus has forced many organizations in the country to consider mandates, according to Colgrove.
When the delta variant caused a jump in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths among the unvaccinated in the summer, more mandates and mandate-like programs were announced.
Some private companies started to issue vaccine mandates in the summer for their in-person based employees including Google, Tyson Foods, United Airlines and the Walt Disney Company, which is the parent company of ABC News. All of the companies allow exemptions for religious reasons and give deadlines for the fall.
The results from some of those mandates were strong, according to data shared by some companies.
When Tyson announced its mandate on Aug. 3, it said that less than half of its nearly 140,000 employees were vaccinated. When the deadline for the mandate came at the end of October, the food processing company said over 60,000 of its members got their shots and 96% of its staff was vaccinated.
“Has this made a difference in the health and safety of our team members? Absolutely. We’ve seen a significant decline in the number of active cases companywide,” Tyson Food president and CEO Donnie King said in a statement.
United Airlines said 48 hours after it announced its mandate, the number of unvaccinated staffers fell from 593 to 320. As of Oct. 27, 99.7% of the airline’s 67,000 employees had complied with the mandate, according to United.
“Our vaccine policy continues to prove requirements work,” the company said in a statement.
Dr. Sarah Goff, an associate professor of health promotion and policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told ABC News that organizations are aiming to get their workplaces back in person and have been more willing to issue the mandates.
She also cited the 1905 Supreme Court case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which ruled that states have the right to issue a public health mandate, and the ruling Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has strong factors behind the mandates.
“There is precedence for vaccines to be legally acceptable, but it’s up to the states and the companies,” Goff said.
In the public sector, a handful of states announced mandates for their state and local agencies in the summer and fall including Washington State.
Officials from Washington state’s health department told ABC News that the percentage of public employees who were vaccinated jumped from 49% on Sept. 6, a month after Gov. Jay Inslee announced the mandate, to 96% on Oct. 18, the mandate’s deadline.
New York City shows progress despite protests
New York City came under the spotlight for its vaccine mandate policies. At first, it allowed unvaccinated public employees who weren’t in health care or the Department of Education, but on Oct. 20 Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the rest of the city workforce needed to get one dose by Oct. 29 or be placed on unpaid leave. The city allowed for religious exemptions city employees who recently received an mRNA vaccine must show proof of their second dose within 45 days of their first shot.
At the time of the announcement, 84% of the city’s workforce had one shot, but several agencies, including the FDNY, NYPD and Sanitation Department recorded less than 75% of their staff, vaccinated, according to data from the mayor’s office.
Unions representing the FDNY and NYPD tried to take the matter to court but were denied injunctions before the deadline. Still, the Uniformed Firefighters Association led rallies against the mayor and the mandate contending that vaccinations should be the personal choice of their members.
By the time the mandate deadline came on Oct. 29, vaccination rates among the lagging agencies greatly increased. As of Nov. 7, 86% of NYPD members, 91% of city EMS personnel and 82% of firefighters have had one shot, according to data from the mayor’s office.
The FDNY said that some firehouses were understaffed the Monday after the deadline, which Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said was from a higher number of firefighters calling out sick. Nigro chastised any firefighters who used their sick days to protest the mandate.
In the end, only 34 police officers were placed on unpaid leave on Nov. 2 and all of the FDNY firehouses were operational on Nov. 5, according to the mayor’s office.
Not willing to take the risk
Goff said at the end of the day most people hesitant about getting the vaccine, even those who make a lot of noise about it, would not jeopardize their careers or families.
“You lose your job and it impacts people’s livelihood and while there may be some who say they’re willing to risk that, they don’t,” she said.
Goff and other medical experts added that the mandates also reach a wider group of people who aren’t completely dead set against the vaccination.
Colgrove said the increases in worker vaccinations after a mandate tracks with the data on vaccine hesitancy in the country.
While he said there is certainly a group that is completely against getting the vaccine, there are more unvaccinated people who are simply on the fence and haven’t had either a strong motivation or good enough messaging to go forward with it.
A survey released on Oct. 28 by the Kaiser Family Foundation said 8% of all adult respondents revealed they would ask for an exemption if presented with such a mandate, and 1% of adult respondents lost a job because of a mandate.
A KFF survey released a month earlier found that two-thirds of unvaccinated workers would not get a shot if their job demanded it.
“When you look at vaccine resistance, the people who are the most opposed often make a very large amount of noise that is at odds with the actual numbers who are against vaccination,” Colgrove said.
A strong nudge and a change in messaging
Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business, told ABC News, said the mandates positive effect on changing the messaging of vaccines.
Schulman, who has written articles in medical publications on the need for better marketing of the COVID-19 vaccine, said companies have been using their vaccine mandate orders to emphasize their effectiveness more directly with their employees.
For example, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart told their employees that they had a responsibility to their employees to remain safe and prevent flight cancellations.
“It ends up being a story about how do we protect ourselves and how do we get up and flying again,” Schulman said. “It sticks with the apathetic population.”
Schulman said that company incentives, such as one-time salary bonuses, also helped sway the holdouts.
“Seeing other people around them get the vaccine, and tolerating it and going about their lives will help those groups,” Schulman said.
More company mandates likely
Last week, President Joe Biden announced a vaccine employment requirement through a new regulation from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Companies that have 100 or more employees must require unvaccinated members to test weekly or face federal fines starting Jan. 4. Over 100 million employees are affected by this order.
Twenty-six states are suing the administration over the order and a judge in Louisiana issued an injunction on Saturday.
The health experts say the court battle over Biden’s plan won’t deter organizations from issuing their own mandates, including ones that go further than OSHA’s rules and place unvaccinated members on leave.
Colgrove said the need for a strong and healthy workplace and the increased examples of mandates working will compel those organizations to improve their vaccine rates one way or another.
“The more normalized it comes, the more people someone knows someone else who is vaccinated, the more people will comply,” Colgrove said. “With any vaccine the longer it’s been around the more people get with it.”
(NOTE LANGUAGE) Kirsten Dunst is opening up about her struggle with depression and her decision to have a second child.
During an interview with The Sunday Times, the 39-year-old actress recalled becoming depressed in her 20s before seeking treatment at a rehabilitation facility in Utah.
“I feel like most people around 27, the s*** hits the fan,” the Bring It On alum said. “Whatever is working in your brain, you can’t live like that any more mentally.”
She continued, “I feel like I was angry. You don’t know that you are repressing all this anger, it wasn’t a conscious thing.”
Dunst added that medication aided in helping her work through the depression, telling the newspaper, “It’s hard to talk about such a personal thing, but it is important to share, too. All I’ll say is that medication is a great thing and can really help you come out of something. I was afraid to take something and so I sat in it for too long. I would recommend getting help when you need it.”
These days, Dunst is in a different chapter of her life. She and actor Jesse Plemons share two sons: Ennis, three,and James Robert, whom they welcomed over the summer.
Dunst revealed that the pandemic was a factor in the two deciding to have another child. While in New Zealand, where The Power of the Dog was filmed, Dunst recalled, “We would go to the grocery store and take off our clothes and wipe down afterwards. No one knew anything, it was terrifying, and at the time I smoked so I was like, ‘Oh my God, if I get this I am gonna die.’”
“I was like, as soon as we are done with this movie, let’s try and have another baby,” she said.
What do Jeff Bezos, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lauren Sanchez have in common? The fact that the internet is going crazy over an exchange the three had over the weekend.
The trio were attendees at the LACMA Art+Film Gala on Saturday, November 6, and a short video clip shared by Variety‘s Marc Malkin on Sunday shows Bezos’ girlfriend, Sanchez — who is standing between the Amazon founder and the Oscar winner — lean in close to DiCaprio while looking up at him and smiling.
What seems like a simple exchange that almost any fan of the Titanic star could hope for has turned into internet gold, with one Twitter user hilariously commenting, “Looks like Bezos’s date rather be with Leo,” to which another replied, “Who doesn’t!!!”
Another quipped, “I guess we won’t be seeing any of Leo’s movies on [Amazon] prime.”
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for Bezos to chime in on the chatter. On Monday, the billionaire tweeted a photo of himself leaning over a sign that reads “Danger! Steep Cliff Fatal Drop” and jokingly captioned it, “Leo, come over here, I want to show you something… @LeoDiCaprio.”
Sanchez, whose romance with Bezos became public in 2019, has not yet commented on the exchange.
(GROVELAND, Fla.) — A Florida mom who spent 85 days hospitalized with COVID-19 complications was able to return home to finally meet her newborn baby.
“I got out of the car by myself and walked into my own house and I didn’t think I’d be able to do that,” Paola Gambini, 32, of Groveland, Florida, said of her homecoming. “And now I’m changing my daughter’s diapers and rocking her, and those are things I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do.”
Gambini, a hair stylist, tested positive for COVID-19 in late July, when she was 33 weeks pregnant.
She isolated at home with mild symptoms initially after testing positive, but then was transported to the hospital by ambulance when she began to have difficulty breathing.
“I remember the EMT saying, ‘You’re so lucky you called us. I don’t know that you would have made it,'” said Gambini, who was admitted to the hospital and less than 24 hours later had to undergo an emergency C-section. “I was freaking out wondering if I was going to die, if the baby was going to survive.”
Gambini gave birth to her daughter, Lilliana, on July 30. The baby was born healthy but was soon whisked away as doctors focused on continuing to treat Gambini.
“I remember touching her and she had so much hair. I’ll never forget that moment. All I cared about was making sure she was okay,” Gambini said. “They took her away and were like, ‘OK, now we’re going to take care of you.'”
Gambini, who had no pre-existing medical conditions but had not been vaccinated, was transferred shortly after giving birth to a nearby hospital, Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center.
She was placed on a ventilator, where she remained for two weeks, and then on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine, which removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, allowing the heart and lungs time to rest and heal.
Gambini remained on the ECMO machine for more than 40 days, while her parents, her fiancé, Michael Hazen, and his parents cared for Lilliana.
“My fiancé was able to visit me and there was not one day he missed,” Gambini said. “He was my rock.”
As Gambini’s health began to improve, her medical team worked with Hazen to coordinate a surprise.
On Gambini’s birthday, Sept. 3, she was reunited with her daughter for the first time since giving birth.
“I remember waking up and they sang happy birthday to me and asked if I was ready to see my baby,” Gambini said. “They had balloons and my whole room was decorated.”
Gambini was then able to see her daughter, recalling, “They let me hold her but I was so weak, I didn’t want to drop her. My arms were so weak.”
Gambini said the more she was weaned off medication, the more she saw how long her road to recovery would be, but she was determined to do it in order to go home to Lilliana.
“I remember worrying what quality of life I would have and the nurses told me, ‘You think this is forever? You just have to get up and move and you’ll be back to normal,'” she said. “From then on, every day I was like, ‘What’s the plan? I want to get home to my baby.'”
On Oct. 22, 85 days after she was admitted, Gambini was able to leave the hospital to go home, where she continues to recover.
“COVID really attacked my lungs, so half of my left lung is damaged. I get winded if I walk too fast,” said Gambini, who is still on oxygen. “And I lost 80 pounds so my body is rebuilding its strength.”
Gambini is now able to hold Lilliana, whom she describes as “such a happy baby.”
“We appreciate life on a level that no one else will experience unless you go through something like this,” she said. “We don’t take anything for granted.”
Declaring “My heart is broken,” Drake is sharing his thoughts following the events of Travis Scott‘s Astroworld Festival on Friday that left eight dead and hundreds injured when the crowd of 50,000 concertgoers rushed the stage.
Taking to Instagram Monday night, the “Way 2 Sexy” rapper wrote in a statement, “I’ve spent the past few days trying to wrap my mind around this devastating tragedy. I hate resorting to this platform to express an emotion as delicate as grief but this is where I find myself.”
“My heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering,” he continued. “I will continue to pray for all of them, and will be of service in anyway I can. May God be with you all.”
Drake’s statement comes after Scott shared his sentiments on the unfortunate events on Saturday, saying he is “absolutely devastated” by what happened and that is “committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.” Scott also promised to refund concertgoers for their tickets, and plans to cover the funeral costs of those who died.
Both rappers are being sued over the events that unfolded at Astroworld, which took place at Houston’s NRG Stadium.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump Organization secured a partial victory on Monday as a Washington, D.C., superior court judge dismissed a portion of a lawsuit brought by the D.C. attorney general over actions by former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
The judge dismissed a claim by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine that Trump’s inaugural committee “wasted” $1 million in rented ballrooms at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel, writing that they have not met the standard of proof that would allow that part of the lawsuit to proceed.
“In short, there is no genuine dispute that the value paid for the space at the Trump Hotel reaches the extreme burden that Plaintiff need to carry a waste claim to its fruition,” Judge José López wrote.
But López did allow the case to proceed, in part, on the claim of “private inurement” — the question of whether the inaugural committee used their funds for private benefit and not for nonprofit purposes — which means the case could proceed to trial.
“It’s a big deal that our lawsuit is moving forward and going to trial. The Inaugural Committee misspent more than $1 million in nonprofit funds to unlawfully benefit private interests,” a spokesperson for the D.C. attorney general’s office said in a statement. “We cannot allow those in power to get away with using money to illegally enrich themselves and their families. AG Racine is working to get that money back and make sure it supports a legitimate public purpose.”
The ruling removed the Trump Organization as a named defendant in the case, yet still keeps the former president’s Washington hotel as a named defendant, as well as the inaugural committee itself.
The judge ordered a status hearing be held in February to determine how the remaining parties want to proceed.
The AG’s probe has been looking into the spending of the Trump inaugural committee, specifically at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The investigation began, in part, after claims were leveled by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a one-time adviser to former first lady Melania Trump, who worked on the inauguration events and later wrote a tell-all book, “Melania and Me,” about her relationship with the Trump family
“I’m working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” Winston Wolkoff told ABC News in an interview last year, referring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and local attorneys general in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
No case has yet to be brought by prosecutors from New York’s Southern District or New Jersey.
The Trump Inaugural Committee, a private tax-exempt organization, raised nearly $107 million in donations and spent $104 million of that on the event, the most ever for an inauguration and twice as much as the amount spent on President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.
The money not spent — totaling about $3 million — was reportedly donated to charity.
(WASHINGTON) — The government’s top doctor released a step-by-step toolkit Tuesday morning to help people combat misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines in their own close circles.
“We need people in communities all across our country to have these conversations,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in an interview with ABC News.
“This is not just the government that needs to be engaged in these conversations. If anything, it’s individuals who have people they trust in their lives who have great power when it comes to helping them move our vaccination rates in the right direction,” Murthy said.
The guide provides a road map for vaccinated people to talk to unvaccinated people who have bought into conspiracy theories or lies that spread on the internet about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Over the summer, the surgeon general issued an advisory that called misinformation an urgent public health threat.
The toolkit, which Murthy hopes will be used by health professionals, faith leaders, teachers or parents with children newly eligible for the shot, is the next step in addressing the ongoing problem. November polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that nearly eight in 10 adults have come across false statements about COVID-19 and have either believed them or been unsure if they were true.
“During the COVID 19 pandemic, misinformation has in fact cost people their lives. So we don’t have an option to give up,” Murthy said.
He called for more transparency in the tech industry since misinformation spreads rapidly on social media platforms.
“The companies have done some work to address health misinformation but they’ve not done nearly enough. And it’s not happening nearly quickly enough,” Murthy said.
The information released Tuesday encourages people to talk in person instead of online. One section is even entitled “If you’re not sure, don’t share!”
It includes discussion questions and illustrations explaining why people share misinformation or what a hypothetical conversation around misinformation could look like.
The recommended approach relies heavily on listening, providing empathy and avoiding shame.
“When talking with a friend or family members, emphasize the fact that you understand that there are often reasons why people find it difficult to trust certain sources of information,” it says.
Murthy acknowledged that it may be hard for vaccinated Americans to be empathetic or understanding when many feel angry that unvaccinated Americans have allowed the virus to spread.
“But nobody generally changes their mind when they feel shame and blame, if anything that hardens people in their position,” Murthy said.
He described a conversation he recently had with an unvaccinated man who had seen myths about the vaccines on Facebook. They talked for 30 minutes, he said. Murthy called it an “open, honest conversation” about what the man’s concerns were.
“And I tried to share with him what we knew and what we didn’t know. I tried to be honest about what the science actually tells us,” Murthy said.
“He sent me a note after that saying he made the decision after that conversation to get vaccinated, and ultimately he did get vaccinated,” Murthy said.
“So what we need to do is is to start by listening to people, by being empathetic, trying to understand where they’re coming from, why they may have the beliefs that they do, and then to try to share our own experience with them to try to help them to access credible sources, like their doctor or other people that they actually trust who are credible scientific sources,” he said.
